Sunday, March 13, 2016

I got married last October very spontaneously. My husband and I had been together for 4 1/2 years at that point and engaged for 1.5 months. I had a two day break from school for MEA (I teach high school social studies) and we decided to get married on that Friday because we couldn't see another foreseeable date working until the summer. I didn't really want to wait that long so we talked about it and decided to go for it. I called my parents and then his to inform them of our plans and luckily they were able to get our parents and siblings there. I assured them that I wasn't pregnant and eventually they believed me.

A picture from our wedding

That being said, my friends and extended family were not invited as it wouldn't have worked out. We didn't really have the time or space to accommodate all of those people. Our tiny apartment barely fit the 11 we had. We decided that we would have a more formal reception in the summer to celebrate with the rest of our family and friends. This appeased my mom who was pretty upset with not getting to plan a wedding, and my little cousins that cried when they heard that they could not attend my wedding.

We've set the date for June 18th. That means I have roughly 3 months to get everything in order. I plan on making all of my own diy decorations and table pieces. I've had it in my head that I want to have mismatched China for he tableware at my wedding so I've slowly been acquiring pieces that I like. I just wanted to make a little update post with my progress on the dish front.

Pic of all of the things to date

I have 2 sets of each of these for guests that want coffee.

This gorgeous glass cake stand that I scored for $8

And these simple vases

I'm really hoping the peonies are in bloom in time for the wedding. My parents have some large peony bushes in their back yard which is where the reception will take place. I'm hoping to nip a few flowers from that for these vases. The top two will have water and a floating flower and the bottom two will be used for smallish bouquets.

I'm currently working on a bunting that will be wrapped around trees or hung somewhere. Haven't figured that out yet.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

I received a light box last Christmas from my husband, the first I'd ever had. It's really great and works well for small things like the jewelry that I make. However, it is not so great for larger things like my hand knits. I have been struggling to make it work because it did cost a fair amount of money, but it just wasn't meant for the types of things I've been trying to use it for. As a result, I have been scouring the interwebs to find a cheap and easy (relatively) way to make my own light box that will do the trick for photographing my stuff. I want to list more things in my Etsy store but don't have the models to do so.

Problem solved. I found a video on youtube, which I will link below, that helped me to create a cheap solution to the light box problem. Mine doesn't look exactly like theirs but they did give me all of the general ideas.

What do you need?

* 3 fold able poster boards

* Approximately 2 yards of a cheap white fabric. Cotton is best as irons well and is inexpensive

Total cost of this DIY: about $12 - Win in my book. The ones that I was looking at on Amazon were running around $50 a pop!

I'm not going to do a full fledged tutorial, as the video covers that, but I just wanted to share my success. (I promise it's as cluttered in that room as it looks. Please pretend it isn't messy. I have no excuses for it!)

Not too shabby eh? I love how I can fold the two sides in for easy storage.

Honestly it worked pretty well for taking photos too. I had to do a little editing but overall I am please with this little DIY. Kind of a pain to make but again, I saved about $40 so it's worth it.